On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we might want to approach.
Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
Seems to be a great guy. I've read his book "Free Culture" which I'd recommend to anyone who wants to know more about his perspective on what it is the free content movement is fighting for.
That said, I think one need only look to the license of that book (Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial) to see where there's room for concern as to whether his philosophy fits with Wikimedia.
Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our community model)
Don't know much about him.
Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
Could be interesting. I certainly like the idea behind his (abandoned) Gnupedia project currently at http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html. But putting him on the board, especially in an appointed as opposed to elected position, could very well cause a culture clash with the community.
Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
It's hard for me to tell what his philosophy is with regard to free content other than free software. I'd definitely love to see him on an advisory board.
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
How 'bout the guy who came up with the idea to use wiki software to build an encyclopedia? Larry Sanger! (yes Jimbo, that last comment was "trolling")
Anthony